I want to make a point here, but I need to make it carefully, gently, so as not to rile people up. I’m not here to start a fight, folks, but it seems to me not nearly as many workers are throwing themselves off the roof of that Foxconn factory in China as I would expect.

Foxconn is the largest contract manufacturer in China and the world, making products notably for Apple and for other American companies, too. The company has been in the news lately because of very public worker suicides by jumping from the factory roof.

Were these people worked to death? Were they worked insane? In one case was the suicide the result of a suspected leak of Apple intellectual property? What kind of sweat shop is Foxconn, anyway?

I don’t know and nether do you. What we do know is the annual suicide rate per 100,000 people in China is about 13.5, with slightly more women than men taking their own lives (the only major country where that is the case, by the way). That means the Foxconn factory, with 300,000 workers, ought to be experiencing almost 40 suicides per year, while the reported numbers are a lot less than that.

This story says more about the press than it does about Foxconn, because I’ve read about it for months and nobody else seems to have done the math, which isn’t hard to do. But doing the math makes the story weaker, so of course it isn’t mentioned.

Foxconn may be Hell for all I know, but it doesn’t appear to be killing people.

91 Comments

Michael
May 27, 2010 at 11:13 am

Yes,

But that is a lot for choosing one particular method of suicide. Also very unusual for women to suicide using violent means. I suspect that their total suicide rate will be much higher than just for this one method of suicide.

Michael

David W.
May 27, 2010 at 12:18 pm

Yes, women usually take less violent means of suicide, but not all women do.

I think the point Cringely is making is that there is a lot of focus on the suicides without taking into account that almost a half million people work there which makes it the size of a good size city. With that many people, we can expect some suicides.

There needs to be more information. For example, what percent of the suicides in China take place at the workplace? What is the breakdown of suicides by age group, occupation, etc.

Is this all the suicides by Foxconn workers? Nope, we don’t know the number of people who walk out of the plant and jump off a local bridge, or who go home turn on the gas in the oven, and stick their head in.

But I do think that “Another Suicide at the Apple iPhone Factory” makes good headlines and you need to sell newspapers.

Damian
May 27, 2010 at 11:19 pm

As for the “off the roof” bit – is this not likely to be at least partly Werther’s syndrome? Presumably the whole workforce becomes aware of these suicides and, statistically, suicides tend to copy each other. Suicidal people who might otherwise choose pills will be affected by the knowledge that colleagues have jumped, and that’s likely to become a vicious cycle as the numbers go up.

This means you can’t necessarily extrapolate from the general population’s suicide methods to reach the underlying or total figure.

Erm, yeah, but… not very many people choose to kill themselves at work. There are without doubt, suicides among the employee population that do not choose to end their lives at work – whether Foxonn is at the root of it or not.

Choosing the workplace as your suicide location, and even “using” the building itself, is sending a message.

Jeff
May 27, 2010 at 2:24 pm

If you’re read about conditions there, you’d know that the phrase “at work” is somewhat misplaced here. These people are killing themselves “at home” as well. They don’t get lives outside the factory, they *live* there – thats being put forward as one of the reasons behind the deaths.

Paul Clapham
May 27, 2010 at 11:31 am

It’s possible that the factory does have 40 workers per year who commit suicide, but that most of them choose to do it at home, or at any rate not at the factory.

Bryan
May 27, 2010 at 11:32 am

Also, Foxconn “should” have 40 suicides per year only if the 13.5/100,000 number holds for populations approximating the demographics of its employees. I have no idea whether or not this is the case, but given the immense variances of living situations within China I would guess that the number of suicides among workers for large, successful companies is lower than the population as a whole, maybe even a lot lower.

MikeS
May 27, 2010 at 4:38 pm

You beat me to this exact point.

I believe an unemployed person with no hope of getting work is much more likely to commit suicide than an employed person.

There must be some age versus suicide rate that must figure in there.

Glenn M
May 27, 2010 at 10:35 pm

Which would then make Cringley’s point that maybe Foxconn isn’t so bad, because if these people were otherwise unemployed, they would be more prone to suicide.

I am not in favor of the lifestyle that Foxconn gives its workers, other than the fact that prior to things like Foxconn, your best hope was working on the collective farm. Remember that the same press that talks about the poor conditions for factory workers in one era will lament the loss of factory jobs in another.

Most of the people that work at Foxconn *live* at Foxconn. They don’t tend to “commute” like folks in other countries do. Foxconn provides housing for many (most?) of their employees. Thus, a suicide at “work” or at “home” is the same, given both are at Foxconn.

R.L Callaway
May 27, 2010 at 12:24 pm

The true rate of Suicide is unknow, what is know that 8 of possable 40 people chose to end their lives by throwing themselves off the building or 20% of the expected sample. Without knowing the ones who hung themselves, took poison, shot themselves (unlikey) walked in front of a bus, ect, ect

Francis (Ottawa)
May 27, 2010 at 12:50 pm

Well the wiki says China’s suicide rate per 100,000 is m:13.0, f:14.8, Canada’s m:17.9, f:5.4, USA’s m:17.7, f:4.5. I don’t know what conclusions to draw from that, other than it’s not easy being a guy in Canada or the USA.

For me, the most important point that Bob is making, subtly to be sure, is that the media often reports things out of context because in context, they would not be interesting. By leaving out the important detail that Bob has reported, the story is so much more interesting and it is interesting stories that attract readers/viewers which sells advertising which makes money for the news media company. They have an incentive to make stories as interesting as possible even if that means lying by omission. And with all the 24 hour news stations and the internet, it’s not easy to come up with enough truly newsworthy stories.

Jeff
May 28, 2010 at 12:12 am

I agree.

Another example of this is the issue of unintended acceleration affecting certain Toyotas.

Service campaigns and recall actions to rectify automotive defects are not isolated occurrences; they are issued constantly.

Combine the elements of a possible defect, anomalous behaviour, and poorly-educated and ill-prepared drivers with a few accidents and you have a story ready to exploit.

Out of the woodwork then come the alarmist victims (whose real motives and/or failings are later revealed) and ambulance-chasing lawyers to contribute to the frenzy.

Meanwhile the ignorant, grandstanding politicians try to appear to take a stand against the evildoers in the name of the public good, before enacting some piece of hastily- and poorly-conceived legislation.

It finally dies down when the press has the next thing to latch onto.

Bozo the Clone
May 28, 2010 at 3:50 am

True, but Bob’s statistics don’t actually go much deeper than the base statistic reported in the media. Considering the location, I have to wonder if a meaningful breakdown of the population in the factory would ever be available (outside of the Chinese government), so I can’t really blame him.

Another thing I’ve seen in the commentary here is the assumption that cultural patterns in suicide (women not using violent means) would be constant between the west and China. The fact that (based on info from a prior poster) the female/male ratio of suicide is so high in China compared with the US makes me think that either the culture of suicide in China IS different, or perhaps violent crimes against women are being disguised as suicide. Even if all the reported “suicides” by women actually are suicides, it still raises the question of “why”. Does the devaluation of girl babies vs. boys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion) persist into adulthood? Is the male/female ratio (or the power structure) in the country so skewed that women are being sexually harassed to death?

Steve W
May 27, 2010 at 2:20 pm

The concern is not for workers in China, the concern is to smear Apple.

The suicide rate at Foxconn is much lower than the national average. That should mean that Foxconn is doing something right.

The suicide rate in the Republic of Korea is higher than the suicide rate in the Peoples Republic of China. Why are there no stories about the suicide rate at HTC? Does anybody care?

Suicide is honorable in the east, and despised in the west. Suicides are covered by life insurance. Suicides in the west are hushed up. In the USA you can drink a bottle of booze, wrap your car around a tree, and they won’t call it suicide. Accidental death pays double. You can take a gun to work or school, kill the bullies and the boss, and they won’t call it suicide.

Steve W
May 27, 2010 at 2:21 pm

The concern is not for workers in China, the concern is to smear Apple.

The suicide rate at Foxconn is much lower than the national average. That should mean that Foxconn is doing something right.

The suicide rate in the Republic of Korea is higher than the suicide rate in the Peoples Republic of China. Why are there no stories about the suicide rate at HTC? Does anybody care?

Suicide is honorable in the east, and despised in the west. Suicides are not covered by life insurance. Suicides in the west are hushed up. In the USA you can drink a bottle of booze, wrap your car around a tree, and they won’t call it suicide. Accidental death pays double. You can take a gun to work or school, kill the bullies and the boss, and they won’t call it suicide.

Skeptical Fanboy
May 27, 2010 at 2:24 pm

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

In order to get a meaningful comparison of suicide rates at Foxconn and the rest of China, you have to know the demographics of the Foxconn workforce and compare their suicide rate to a representative sampling of the general Chinese population of a similar demographic makeup.

My guess is that unemployed people kill themselves at a much higher rate than people who have jobs. It’s probably also true that people who run afoul of the Chinese government in some way (Tibetans, Falun Gong, Uighurs, etc.) get reported as suicides at a higher-than-normal rate. Note that the official suicide rate for those who run afoul of the government may be higher than the actual suicide rate. Oppressed people in totalitarian regimes have a tendency of turning up dead under mysterious circumstances that just happen to be classified as suicides.

D. B.
May 28, 2010 at 6:43 am

Lies, damned lies, statistics, and pundit pontifications.

Amazing that the Cringe-man’s “statistical analysis” is so shallow. It’s demographic apples and oranges and he’s talking kumquats.

This shallow analysis now makes me much more skeptical of all his journalism.

Maynard Handley
June 5, 2010 at 8:22 pm

“Oppressed people in totalitarian regimes have a tendency of turning up dead under mysterious circumstances that just happen to be classified as suicides.”

Thank god that never happens in US jurisdictions, like in say Guantanamo, or Abu Ghraib, or to those “rendered” to other countries by the CIA…
Damn totalitarian regimes and their slick justifications for torture and murder — I say anything, ANYTHING, is justified in the fight against them.

I could read a book about this without finding such real-world appraoehcs!

Alan Atwood
May 27, 2010 at 2:54 pm

Is there another Chinese company where employees have taken to throwing themselves off the roof?

Stats are wonderful. You can use them in lots of ways. As Twain said: ‘Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”‘*

The number of suicides at Foxconn is up to at least 15 this year after the events of the last few days. Statistics of the general populace notwithstanding, that tells me that something is out of whack. Find me another mainline Chinese OEM/contract manufacturer for front line luxury US electronics where employees are similarly hurling themselves to their death and then we’ll talk.

*People with what is supposed to be a relatively good job in China don’t impress me as generally being part of what would be considered an at-risk for suicide group. Then again, once people get used to having an income, maybe they also begin yearning to live an actual life and that life is lacking.

With that in mind, it is not surprising that a fairly homogenous group like Foxconn’s employees would choose the same method and that the actual suicides would cluster.

mike Retondo
May 27, 2010 at 8:23 pm

Bob,

The suicide rate in the US is 10 per 100,000 people. If a US company with 300,000 employees had five people jump to there death in the past year you can bet it would be national news.

Kevin Kunreuther
May 27, 2010 at 11:12 pm

Foxconn gets the media attention as of late because of its affiliation with Apple. The interesting story to me is not the suicides but the story not being told – what goes on at their factories, their middle management offices, etcetera – spies from other Chinese companies are planted at Foxconn, they steal tech designs before they are manufactured or rolled out at Foxconn and quickly copied and sold at competing manufactures months before – then these thieves sue Foxconn and its clients for stealing their ideas until extortion money is paid to drop the lawsuit – what a racket, this China, Incorporated.

Paradise Pete
May 27, 2010 at 11:47 pm

I’ve lived in several countries where this type of work is common. Employees tend to be poor and relatively uneducated, and they travel from far away to get the job. They of course have no place to live and no local family support, and so the company also provides housing.

So you have young people, alone and away from home and family, working long hours at a dead-end, uninteresting job. They are sad at best, and many depressed. Thoughts of suicide must be common. Once one person chooses to throw himself off the roof, that will naturally become “the way” to do it, and suicide being “contagious” is a well-established phenomenon among young people.

Not long ago there was an undercover expose of the working conditions at the factory, and other than it being hard work and long hours little else was discovered.

Cringely is pointing out that the suicide rate is not just slightly below the norm, it is *way* below it. And yet posters are countering with “hmph. stats. big deal. Here is my *guess*.”

Those posters seem to be comparing it with their own workplace, where indeed it would be remarkable if several workers committed suicide at the office. But the factory is their workplace and home-provider. Their entire lives revolve around it.

That the rate is so low tells me that it is simply the best opportunity out of a poor set of choices, and conditions are hard but not brutal.

Maynard Handley
June 5, 2010 at 8:32 pm

This analysis very much matches my Chinese friend’s analysis — young people (mainly girls), no social life, not much hope for the future. The surrounding city is expensive, so even though they are not “trapped” in the compound, as a practical matter it’s really not feasible to spend the occasional night on the town.

It’s a difficult, sad situation, and it’s not really obvious what Foxconn can do to improve things. (And this is said by someone who considers the CEO of Foxconn to be a horrible evil unpleasant man.) You might imagine things like trying to provide a social life for the girls — treat them like girls at a US female college in the 1950s and occasionally bus in boys from the nearest motorcar factory or whatever for socials. But one problem with that is that, again my friend said, some girls would get pregnant, and Foxconn would be perceived by society as “responsible” for the pregnancies. To me that seems like a reasonable tradeoff (especially if Foxconn provided every manner of birth control to the girls) but I don’t know Chinese sexual mores.

The larger issue, of course, is that this is what life looks like in an unequal society — the same inequality that certain segments of our society want to increase as rapidly as possible.

Mark
May 28, 2010 at 6:11 am

Regardless of the suicide rate, the fact remains that everyone working there decided to work there of their own free will. The fact that they chose the Foxconn factory over other alternatives is evidence that all the other alternatives must be worse. This is not to say that Foxconn factory work would be pleasant by our standards, but that every other option available to the workers of Foxconn must be more unpleasant.

There’s no doubt that the standard of living for most people in China could use improvement. The only way this can be accomplished is through economic growth. That’s exactly what this factory and other like it are doing: growing the Chinese economy.

A well thought out, scientifically based method of detecting and preventing this problem was published in the book “Depression Cured at Last” by Sherry A. Rogers and is further improved upon in some of her more current works “Detoxify or Die” , “No More Heartburn”, and others. I hate to sound like a shill but this stuff is the best treatment system I’ve seen. Heck, your public library probably has copies. An oversimplification might read something like: A compromised immune system, damaged to the point where the person is feeling horribly depressed can be caused by poor nutrition, chemical exposure and heavy metals. Everything in the series of books elaborates on these themes. At the end of each chapter are copious references to the basic research papers, most of which have appeared in major medical publications. Thought I’d try to contribute a solution rather than just sing to the choir.

Great Scott
May 28, 2010 at 9:17 am

The media a few months ago made a big stink about the suicide rate among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. However, when someone finally compared that to the suicide rate of the population in general, the general population rate was found to be much more than the veterans rate. (The media quickly changed its tune to something completely different…)

John
May 28, 2010 at 10:38 am

Maybe we’re focusing on the wrong thing. Having had family members who have suffered depression I know this is a very real and difficult illness and often the cause of suicide. In the USA we have fought kicking and screaming to even provide health care insurance coverage for mental illness. Why is that?

When you understand what is going wrong, you can help someone. The treatments for depression are not as evolved as we would like, but there ARE treatments that work. It is an amazing and wonderful thing to watch a relative’s mind come back. It is sad we shun people with mental health issues and financially deny them access to health care.

You can over stress a worker in a manufacturing job. You can work them too hard and too long. You can underpay them. You can give them terrible working conditions. You can mistreat them. If they are on the edge of depression, their job can definitely push them over the edge.

Treating people well, fairly, safely, and compassionately does help; and its good business. My guess is the Chinese have some room for improvement here.

Do the Chinese have the resources to spot and treat depression? When you are in a depression you do not understand your illness. If your job is overwhelming you — I can believe your boss or your job is the cause of your problem. If the illness is serious enough you will kill or commit suicide, and you may do it in a way to make a statement.

The correct thing to do is for the Chinese government and Foxconn to investigate each suicide and try to find out what was happening in each workers mind and life. Hopefully then everyone will then make the needed improvements. Improving the work situation will not prevent depression. You have to accept the fact it is a real illness and provide the ability to diagnose and treat it.

It is also important to note this is not a Chinese problem. I work for a large and historic USA company. A company that used to value the individual and used to be a leader, often by decades in important social issues. This company has become a terrible place to work. It is only a matter of time until people begin to break and bad things happen. You can expect about 40 suicides or killings a year.

The real story here is — YES the press never did the math and sensationalized a problem. AND — this is case where people need help. Is help being provided? Most everyone completely missed that part of the story.

Paul Allen
May 28, 2010 at 11:28 am

Reading this article made me want to commit suicide.

ah one, ah two
May 28, 2010 at 12:08 pm

Algezerha (sp!) TV reported the comparison between Chinese society in general, VS the FoxConn population correctly, letting a FoxConn exec tell the story.

John
May 28, 2010 at 1:09 pm

This reminds me of our recent discussion of Google News. I got the impression some folks at Google saw and discussed what transpired. I hope so.

This is a good example why I think Google News so put more effort on getting better diversity on the news. US news has become an exercise where every organization just repeats the same story. There is little independent investigation. Its just the same original story spun over and over again.

I am glad someone at Al Jazerra (http://english.aljazeera.net/) took the initiative to dig a little deeper. Maybe Google should consider them as a way to improve their news service.

Who knows I could sway public opinion in the West if more people saw the “other” side of the story, and in a way that was not “spun” by the White House. Sure Al Jazerra is biased in their reporting too. Who isn’t? Given two oppositely biased sources, one could be closer to the real truth.

Ronc
May 28, 2010 at 3:43 pm

“Sure Al Jazerra is biased in their reporting too. Who isn’t?” That’s an understandable but dangerous attitude. Back in the 50’s there was the state-run communist news of the USSR. In the US we all knew it was national propaganda to which it’s citizens had no alternative. Thanks to efforts like Radio Free Europe the truth filtered through. Truth comes from a trustworthy source, not from biased sources. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

I just got this comment by e-mail from an anonymous coward and wanted to include it here.

–Bob

Bob, your commentary is absurd apologist spin.
Foxconn employs hundreds of thousands, but they are spread out all over, many are subcontractors. They make products for other brands besides Apple.

The suicides are happening in Apple factories. It’s the Apple sweatshops that are driving the workers to suicide. Apple sweatshops have been reported for decades since Apple started assembling products in Asia decades ago. You and other Apple fanboys have always turned a blind eye to their sweatshop factories. They pay their workers shit wages, expose them to hazardous materials, and there are no social safety nets. The Apple workers don’t make enought to buy Apple products. If anybody complains about anything, they are fired immediately and kicked off the property. Union organizers are ‘handled’ by goons. Apple does not allow their workers to unionize.

How would you like your kids to work in some factory town, sleep in a room like a prison cell, work long hours for shit wages, and get constantly bullied by middle managers? You get paid a nickle while they charge you a dime, that’s what it’s like in a company town. Whatever savings they accumulate, they send it back home to their families. You would not want your kids to work in that Apple factory.

Admit it! Apple sweatshops are Hellholes. They get poor uneducated people who have no options and work them to death. Their middle managers use intimidation and fear to drive the workers. They work long hours, work hours off the clock, get shit wages, have no benefits, no pensions, nothing. Your “think different” company is no different than any other exploitive corporation.

Quit spinning, quit apologizing, quit being a fanboy and start to hold Steve Jobs and Apple accountable for their corporate behavior. Remember the shame and public humiliation Martha Stewart and Kathie Lee Gifford went through when factories that made their signature brands were exposed to be sweatshops?
Steve Jobs and Apple computers are getting a big fat huge FREE PASS from the media, you know and you’re part of it.

A friend of mine, like this guy, questioned the whole idea that this could all be happening at one factory. Well it is. This is one factory but many buildings — all of them in the same industrial park. 330,000 people work in the same place running three shifts per day. And you know what that’s very analogous to? Ohio State University, where between students and staff about 100,000 people are functioning on the same campus at any one time. I worked a million years ago at WOSU so I have a sense of the place and recall similar stories of kids killing themselves in faceless, nameless high-rise dorms and being found days later. To some extent this is an artifact of over-crowding, but more to the point it is an artifact of populations: the point of my column was ONLY to compare the suicide rate at Foxconn to that of the nation as a whole, which is actually somewhat higher than Foxconn.

But the U.S. suicide rate is lower, you point out, at just under 11 per 100,000. See, China IS a hellhole. Based on this statistic China would appear to be a Hellhole only for women, actually. More women than men kill themselves in China and a Chinese woman is twice as likely to kill herself as is an American woman. But American MEN, who are killing themselves at a rate of almost 18 per 100,000 FAR exceed the Chinese suicide rate for either men OR women.

So if China is so bad is America even worse?

There’s clearly a suicide trend at Foxconn. People do it because other people did it. People do it THE WAY other people did it because that way was noticed and discussed. Does that put some murder weapon in the hand of Steve Jobs? I don’t think so.

It would be a good idea for Apple to take a closer look at working conditions at Foxconn, but the idea that this is peculiar to Apple products is absurd. Dell should be looking at Foxconn as should be HP and Microsoft for the company makes products for all three. I can’t imagine they do it differently (or any worse) for Apple than they do for HP or Sony. That simply wouldn’t be efficient.

Ronc
May 29, 2010 at 2:10 pm

It looks like “PapayaSF” has found the real cause of the suicides. His post is below. It looks like they are being bribed to commit suicide. Wow 6-10 years of gross salary!

Maynard Handley
June 5, 2010 at 8:41 pm

This business of “bribery” is, my chinese friend claims, pure spin on the part on Foxconn — a way to deflect attention from Foxconn to vaguer issues like “isn’t it terrible the pressure Chinese parents put on their kids”.

The amounts of money being paid out on a death is not large by world standards, not even by Chinese standards — not enough to, for example, buy a house. And it’s not like Chinese parents are some sort of weird automata that don’t love their kids — how many US parents do you think are, on hearing that their kids could “earn” I don’t know, say 6*$50,000=$300,000 on committing suicide, would think “damn, that sounds like a good deal — I’ll get to work on persuading Suzie to jump”?

This is the weirdest sort of orientalism — moving beyond acknowledging that customs and food are different “over there” to assuming that basic issues like love and the parent-child bond are totally different.

[…] Cringely, who says, “not nearly as many workers are throwing themselves off the roof of that Foxconn factory in China as I would expect.” Yes, that’s right. He thinks there should be more suicides. Sigh. […]

Zheng
May 29, 2010 at 8:35 am

I’m afraid I cannot agree with your point here. It is not appropriate to compare the average suicide rate with that in the company. You don’t know much about the Chinese society, it takes huge efforts and struggling for most of the students to study all the way from a kid to finish their college, especially for those not born in big cities. After that, they went into big companies, global 500, they were expecting a reasonable life they had been fighting for. But disappointingly, lives in companies like Foxconn are even worse, and some of them are unfairly treated, humiliated, and all of them are exhausted doing the work with no hope for future. That’s abnormal. There are big problems about the society and the government currently, but companies like Foxconn are also sucking the blood of employees and push them to the roof of the building.

Jugger
May 29, 2010 at 10:15 am

You said that, and I quote: “the annual suicide rate per 100,000 people in China is about 13.5″. Well, I really want to know where did you get that fact, is it from a trustworthy agency or some adding up of the computer of your own work. And by annual, you did not point out which year to start and when to end, and also you did not point out the time span of your data as well. I do believe, no matter what, you should be more discreet and detail about your facts, if not so-called.

To tell you the truth, I don’t really know about Foxconn till its 5th or 6th kill. But I do believe, since I’m a Chinese, I know something a little better than you do, that is: people don’t usually kill themselves in an inreversable way just to make a point here in China, especially when they’ve already said their goodbyes to puberty a long time ago. I mean, what would you do if you had “one of those days” too long to become just plain “one day” Would you want to make the world aware of your pain and sufferings by commit a suicide? I don’t think so.

Facts and figures are only quoted or created or conned in order to make a point less pointless. So, maybe you are saying that you are pro-Foxconn rather than being humane and social. Or you might just want people to be more reasonable and less biased about some suicide incidents that just happened to happen in Foxconn; or maybe you are a victim of big companies’ settlements, you don’t want Foxconn to pay its dues. But may I ask you a question, did you really pictured unbagged 40 Chinese dead bodies, with their brain matters shattered all over the ground and their faces covered with blood and a hint of the very last desperado look of sadness and determination, their torso twisted and flat lying motionless on the ground of the very place that their will never be standing on ever again in your head?

You know what, I’m not sure I want to know your answer.

PapayaSF
May 29, 2010 at 1:16 pm

There’s another factor nobody has mentioned here yet: Foxconn pays a very tidy sum to compensate survivors: workers make 900-1500 yuan/month, but if they die their family gets 110,000 yuan. 6-10 years’ pay for your family for an at-work suicide must be very tempting to someone considering it anyway.

Jason
May 29, 2010 at 2:49 pm

One thing that may be influencing the location and method of suicide is that the estate of the person who committed suicide is rumoured to be paid 100,000 renminbi (~15k).

Cheers , I just stopped in to visit your website and thought I’d say I had a great visit .

chrb
September 11, 2010 at 5:37 am

” the annual suicide rate per 100,000 people in China is about 13.5… That means the Foxconn factory, with 300,000 workers, ought to be experiencing almost 40 suicides per year”

Wrong. The majority of people who commit suicide (around 90%) are either mentally ill, or substance abusers. Foxconn does not actively recruit from either of those two groups, so you would expect to see a much lower suicide rate at Foxconn than amongst the general population.

Wrong. The majority of people who commit suicide (around 90%) are either mentally ill, or substance abusers. Foxconn does not actively recruit from either of those two groups, so you would expect to see a much lower suicide rate at Foxconn than amongst the general population.

I have searched this information for a long time.The majority of people who commit suicide (around 90%) are either mentally ill, or substance abusers. Foxconn does not actively recruit from either of those two groups,